


in another world (anything can happen)

by orphan_account



Category: Marvel, Thor (Movies)
Genre: Gen, more characters as added, mostly this is me being a big gay because of this cool new website i found
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-04-09
Updated: 2013-05-20
Packaged: 2017-12-07 23:16:57
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 13
Words: 2,676
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/754251
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I found this really cool new website (typetrigger.com) that prompts you every two hours, I think, and you write a 300 words or less drabble based on the prompt.</p>
<p>Basically, a collection of really awful and vaguely Thor-centered drabbles.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. following you

You can barely hear the muted crunching and shuffling of footsteps breaking thick snow behind you.

Of course, you know who it is. It's always the same one person. He's been following you since - oh, he's been following you since before you even learned how to toddle around. And after such a long time, it seems he's the only one who still follows you.

Though you rather want to turn - to see his face - you don't. You keep your view firmly ahead, staring at the peaks of mountains in the distance and the stretches of snowy planes.

When you feel a hand reach out to gently stroke the back of your hair, you swallow roughly and close your eyes. He doesn't touch your hair for long before his hand drops back down.

There's more muted crunching as he sits down somewhere behind you in the snow. "Sit with me?" He asks, his voice gentle as if trying not to scare a feral animal.

You consider his offer briefly, keeping your gaze steadily on the long stretch of white in front of you while you mull it over.

In front of you, there are no people, nothing but snow, ice, and rock. There is the ever-present cold.

Behind you, there is someone who loves you fiercely and always has. Someone who would still sit with you, someone who even makes you feel... warm.

The choice is easy. You turn around, and settle down on the ground.

You will not follow another's lead for long, but for now you are content to sit in the snow with a man who loves you and listen to him speak of petty things. When he falls asleep in the snow, you will leave no trace of yourself behind and run away.


	2. running

Your lungs burn from lack of oxygen, your sides scream at you to stop.   
  
You run through worlds, realms. Each footfall takes you to a new destination. The stalls of an elvish bazaar flash in front of your eyes for only a few seconds before they are replaced by too-tall too-familiar golden spires. Another step, and you're under the towering canopies of a silver-leaf forest.   
  
The destination that makes you stop, for a while, is the sea that shines purple framed by the clean white beach. You remember splashing and laughing in the shallows, and lounging on the shores. It's youthful sentiment to think of these things, but no one is around to see your weakness.   
  
You stare at the sea for a few minutes, letting your legs rest and your breath catch.   
  
Then, you push your juvenile feelings away, and take one deep inspiration. You raise one foot, and hit the ground again, taking yourself elsewhere.   
  
Then you are in a deep, dark cave system that smells of smoke and metalwork. It's easy to run again, after your short reprieve by the beachside. You gain rhythm easily, tap tap tap tap as you dance through foreign worlds.   
  
A field of silvery-green grasses, taller than your head and thicker than your hair. A babbling brook lined with rocks and reeds.   
  
You land in a gross, mundane place - no nature here, though some call it a "concrete jungle". It smells like thick exhaust and human frailty.   
  
When you take time to stare at the buildings, you notice that they're rather familiar. Your stomach lurches up into your throat. You feel sick; this place is just a reminder of your own failures.   
  
The scene disappears when you stomp on the ground. You take a few moments to breathe heavily.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> it is entirely coincidental that this prompt is running after the last words of the first drabble were "run away".
> 
> i don't choose the prompts, people.


	3. apparently not

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> and a quick thor pov chapter!

You do not ever doubt that your brother is happy.

He has a loving family. He has friends. He has his books, and you know how books bring him great joy.

You can see his happiness in the little things: the sparks dancing in his eyes, the sweep of his eyelashes when he shuts them in contentment, and the way his mouth quirks upward when he's amused and trying to hide it.

He smiles and says he loves you back, so how can he not be happy?

_Your brother is dead (and your mind replays the moment when you saw him kill himself over and over) and you know he was not happy._


	4. stacks

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> another thor pov!

Word comes of a shadowy figure, slipping around one of the nine great libraries. The gossip says he is dark of hair and tall of frame; those mere words are enough to paint a picture in your mind of a familiar man with high cheekbones sharp enough to slice bread and eyelids you'd love to kiss.

Travel is as easy as ever. And once you are there, you slip down into the catacombs of the library.

The books are stacked higher than you stand, and you are not short. You wonder idly what would happen if one of the orderly piles of books were knocked over.

You find him in the darkest, furthest corner. He's created a nest out of books, dusty tomes stacked twelve or thirteen high around him.

His dark hair is in disarray, and his eyelids are bruised purple from sleeplessness.

"Yes?" He says, voice cracking at the end. "I'm not doing anything wrong. You can't make me come home."

You sigh. Taking his face carefully in your hands - when had his skin gotten so pale and so thin? - you very gently touch your forehead to his. "Please," you whisper.

"No," your brother says tiredly.

"Please," you repeat, voice rough and emotions raging.

He doesn't respond. You remove your hands from his face and hang your head, fists clenching and unclenching.

When you look up again, your brother is gone. You hear the phantom of a cackle, and then a very loud crash. When you look around wildly, you see the stacks of books falling to the floor like dominoes.

Very thin hands alight on your shoulders, and whispered words are carried into your ear by a gentle breath. "Goodbye, brother."

It is very soft and very sweet of him, and you treasure it greatly.


	5. taken

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> baaaack to loki's pov!

You lie down in the snow, eyes fluttering closed as the cold envelopes you like a tomb.

You know, many years ago, you had been left out in the cold as a child. Purposefully. To kill a child with your own hands is shameful; to allow them to die of exposure, less so.

Perhaps that is why the cold (and _those who live in it_ ) scare you so much, because you know they meant for you to be dead.

It is no matter. Sometimes you wish they had succeeded.

Because even though you had been saved, and taken to a place of warmth, you were still a child belonging to the chill of winter. You burnt in sunlight, you burnt near low-burning hearths, you burnt with the heat of your not-mother's affections and your not-brother's passion.

Instead of being burnt over and over, until you were just a pile of charred nothing, you wish they had _just - let - you - freeze._

You'd rather have died and never lived a life than to have been taken to that place.

They took your heritage. They took your death. They took their places as your parents, they took your condemned life and made it their own. And you hate them for it.

You think, better to have never to have lived at all than to to have lived and lost.


	6. family secrets

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> loki pov again

You cry into your hands, tears that are not befitting a grown man of your position rolling off your chin and splattering messily on the floor. The tears don’t stop coming, and your breath hitches unsteadily.

You can’t believe your parents kept this from you. From your brother.

A skeleton in the closet is one thing; a monster is an entirely different affair.


	7. we are

"We are brothers," he says.

"No, we're not," you reply.

"We are childhood friends! You _cannot_ deny that," he pushes on, a miserable look on his face.

"We were," you say amicably. "But things as fickle as friendship can change. We are no longer."

"We are princes," he tries once more.

Your face shuts off, and you feel your anger _rising, rising, rising_. How dare he remind you of this?! "Yes," you hiss out. "We are princes. Of different kingdoms."

Sensing a sudden shift in the tone of the conversation, he (for once) does the smart thing and falls silent. Though he can never fall silent for long, oh no.

He puts his hand on your leg - his body heat burns through the fabric - and says, "We are brothers. You cannot change that."

"We are not kin," you remind him testily.

"Family is not always blood," he reminds _you_ , just as testily. "We are brothers. Now hush your caterwauling and trouble making, and accept it."

"We are not," you say once more, feeling more and more like a (funny idiom though it is) 'broken record'.

"We are," he says firmly, closing that conversation entirely.

You sigh. You do not accept it, but you do not fight it. Not now, at least. You do, however, sourly think of all the tortures you will inflict upon him at a later date.


	8. better than

You are better than the rest of those simpering sycophants that surround your brother; this, you know with a certainty that could topple the world.

They want his power. They want his hands on theirs or his attention on their words - they do not want to soak up every bit of golden light that your brother exudes. They want to be included, in your group of friends, for selfish and impure reasons.

You do not want your brother's power. You do not want him to touch you (besides a brotherly clasp on the throat, or during spars), and you do not really want him to pay too much attention to your words, which you know can be cruel and out-of-hand at times. Most days, you do not even want to be included in those considered his companions.

You want power - yes, you will not deny it. You were born to a king, though, and power is in your blood. But you will make your power, your rule, through your own work, and not through the exploitation of someone too stupid to realize it. When you rule, when you are powerful, you will not use your brother to do it.

That's why you're better than them. They are lazy, savage beasts who want to piggyback upon your brother's own powers to rise to their glory. You will make your own, through blood and sweat and enough tears to fill an ocean.

You have to. Otherwise, how could you be different from them?


	9. jump off

In some cycles, you think, maybe you do not let go.   
  
You cannot let go through all of the rebirths and deaths of the world, after all. Instead of allowing yourself to be so apathetic about everything that you can't even be bothered to jump, just let go when an opportunity presents itself, you know there is an alternate story when you throw yourself off.   
  
You try to imagine it - to be so invested in yourself that when you can't stand anything at all anymore, instead of putting up with all of the crassness and crudeness and ignorance, you say "fuck it" and jump off. You imagine wind streaming through your dark hair and over your scalp as you run for the bridge and (supposed) freedom. You imagine your feet leaving the hard surface of the bridge. You imagine the pull of gravity as you fall and fall and fall through empty air like a leaf off a tree.   
  
You swallow harshly, and stop that train of thought where it is.  
  
In some cycles, you think, maybe you do not fall. And maybe you do not jump.   
  
Maybe someone pushes you.   
  
Three figures flash through your mind - one old and wizened (your father), one young, brash and beautiful (your brother), and one jealous, dark, and watchful (the gatekeeper).   
  
You think you could have gone without this moment of anagnorisis. To be pushed so far as to jump...to be thrown off forcibly...   
  
Oh, letting go seems so good compared to those options.   
  
 _(You do Not think of the worlds where someone catches you before you fall. You do Not.)_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> anagnorisis - a word we discussed in Literature today. the definition is "a moment in a play or other work when a character makes a critical discovery."
> 
> the definition rather makes me think of loki - learning you're a frost giant is, after all, a pretty critical discovery. and in the aristotelian definition it's the discovery of one's own true identity. ouch.


	10. pioneer

Once again, you march through the snow and listen to the quiet crunching of ice under your feet. You smile to yourself.

When you reach the city, you find that though the people are cold, their blood runs hot and heady. It doesn't take much to fan the fires of revolution, to encourage and lift up.

When the people cry out for change, you reveal yourself to them.

"Come with me," You call out sweetly. "I know the weak points of their defenses, I know the secret entrances."

"Yes," Someone in the crowd shouts, "but who are you? Why should you help us?"

So you spin your sob story for them, playing it up as if it still affected you in anyway. Abandoned at birth, raised by liars, thrown away like so much trash. You do not play up your anger. Your blood itches for a violent revolution as it is; making it more violent and more angry would be gauche.

The people yell in sympathy for you and stomp their feet. The ice cracks under the force of them.

"I will acquire us a ship," you tell them. And you do - she is a beaut. Big thing, large and grand. Given to you by your daughter.

You fill the ship up with your daughter's army, then return to the snow. "Come," you shout. "Come for revolution!"

The people fill up your ship with alacrity, axes and maces in hand. You smile, and move to the helm.

The ship sails smoothly. You stand at the very edge of the helm, wind whipping through your hair and tickling your scalp, black-tipped fingers digging into the meat of your palms.

You pioneer the first and last successful attack against your childhood home, laughing all the while.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The ship Loki sails is Naglfar - which is made out of fingernails. Eugh.


	11. dry rot

Your ship - your beautiful, forsaken ship - crumbles even as you sail her across the seas. The wood chips - falls - tumbles to the deck and into the roiling waters below. You could care less. You will not, after all, be making a return trip in this ship (unless _somehow_ in this endeavor you fail, and people who love you are left alive.)   
  
Underneath your feet, down in the hold, your army clamors. They can taste the bloodshed, feel guts and see entrails in their hands even now.   
  
Another piece of your ship cracks off and falls into the sea. You shut your eyes gently, and think of a better (not happier) time.


	12. who isn't?

Who, in Asgard, isn't a lovely blonde warrior? Who isn't strong and fierce in the heat in battle? Who isn't dying - literally - to have their name sung in songs and tales by skalds for the next millennia?   
  
These questions and more in similar veins ring through your mind for centuries, eons. They all boil down to the one, simple question that you know is at the heart of all your problems - who is different?   
  
You. You are the answer.   
  
And oh, you are bitter about it.


	13. bitter end

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thor pov again

Your brother yells. Tears leak out from the corners of his eyes, trailing down his cheeks. His voice breaks into a _thousand_ terrible pieces while his hands clutch at his breast and try to contain what must be an awful rage.   
  
He does not reassure you he loves you.   
  
You slam your weapon into him resolutely, and he hits you back. Your brother wrassles with you on the ground, punches you squarely in the jaw. You kick him off, push him to the ground, think of yanking on his hair.   
  
Later, after his fall, you think of past fights. Past fights, wherein you yelled, kicked, and did not tell him you loved him after. Past fights, wherein you whole-heartedly expected him to smile weakly and reassure you that "I still love you, brother."   
  
O, what a bitter end for brothers.


End file.
